JB:I guess I don't understand why you're emphasizing this point. Was someone garbling natural selection?
CB: My initial post on this was in response to Woj who said:
"WS: Another example of teleological bullshit. What makes sense in
"evolutionary terms" is the chance of survival not having more babies."
^^^^^
My point was that among humans what also matters is that you survive until your children (and your sib's children) have babies because you can help them bear and raise them. Therefore nonfertile parts of the human life cycle do influence genetic survival rates. Elderly beetles, on the other hand, may not have a lot to contribute to the reproductive success of their offspring and relatives. Of course, an cohesive band, not just immediate family, can have additional influence. But then we're getting into cultural adaptation and possibly even leaving entirely the realm of the much slower and more unwieldy genetic adaptation, so I'll leave it there. ^^^^ CB: None of what I said argued against this. Although, still, the living longer (longer survival) of the grandparents is adaptive because it allows them to contribute to childcare, which I always include as part of reproduction in the larger sense. So, still long survival is adaptive because it enhances reproduction in the larger sense.
So, yes, longer survival can enhance adaptation as you outline, but it does so because it enhances reproduction, in the larger sense ,i.e. including childcare.
The band is larger sociality. Greater sociality is _the_ human adaptive advantage, in my opinion.
For me ( and for anthropologists, cultural and biological) culture is part of human's _biological_ adaptation, at this level of discussion. Culture (or symbolling/language) is what gives humans the great biological adaptive advantage over so many other species ( mostly big species in size, other mammals; not bugs or bacteria).
>Language/symbolling enhances sociality tremendously. Was
language/symbolling
>invented in the mother-child relationship ? i.e., did women invent
>language/symbolling ?
Has anyone tried to put together an argument for this claim? I'd be interested in seeing it. I do think that one thing the feminist anthropologists and (even) sociobiologists did was make a good argument for the greater significance of the mother-infant relationship as opposed to the male-female mate relationship.
Jenny Brown
^^^^^
CB: I thought of it, and have developed it some. Lets develop it.